1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of arithmetic operations performed by a computer. More particularly, the present invention relates to trivial arithmetic computations performed on a computer.
2. Art Background
Computers execute tens of millions of operations every second. Many of the computations performed consist of highly redundant sequences of simple instructions and many of these instructions performed are trivial operations. However, complex arithmetic units to perform arithmetic operations, such as dividers, multipliers and adders, must contain sufficiently complex logic to handle the most complicated operation the arithmetic unit might perform. A divider, for instance, must be able to calculate a complex division such as 357.998324/8553.6001 as well as simpler fractions such as 2/1. In the past, thought has been given towards optimizing certain classes of operands. Multiplication by a 12-bit integer, for instance, might be completed more rapidly than multiplication by a 28-bit integer. However, little thought has been given towards optimizing a specific instance of an operand. This is due to the fact that optimizing an arithmetic function for specific instances of an operand is too costly. Furthermore, the payoff for such an operation is generally believed too small to be worth the effort.